Less people getting screened (or at least less often), because they don't want it showing up on their medical records.

It's not like they can just pack up and move to the next country over

And we (the Canadians) are all very thankful for that!

Yeah, it's not like there are many that might prevent people from biking to work, like around here. Hell, sometimes you can barely drive to work, much less bike/walk.

I depends on how things are being reformed.
I'd imagine if certain items - such as the military - were reformed properly there'd be a lot more of the pie to spend on other categories...

Sometimes fixing one section requires or assists in fixing others.

I was thinking that it would be good for mapping out real "surround sound" similar to how complex reflection and/or ray-tracing is done.

Even if the initial sounds themselves are canned, the sound through a wooden hallway, a hallway with a carpet, or a large open room would be different. Combine that with digital surround and it could be quite useful.

Amusingly, I read this as but I doubt he'd get past the primates, which actually seems to be a good descriptor for many other members of the party.

Best tool for the job. Doesn't mean that people should plan to replace photoshop with mspaint, but it also doesn't mean that mspaint shouldn't be available.

Best tool for large spreadsheets, documents, etc: still a PC (or a laptop).
Best tool when one is on the go: Might not be the above. Just like a camera on a cellphone isn't going to compare to a DSLR, it's still a useful thing to have for many people depending on the situation. Not many people cart a full-sized camera around all the time.

I don't plan on writing out a master's thesis or a 1000x1000 cell Excel spreadsheet on a tablet, but for many more casual uses it's still useful.

Nobody is telling people that they *have* to use tablets instead of PC's (well, MS did foist a crappy tablet-centric interface out with win8, but different topic). They're saying the option is available.

Well, technically they'll die on Earth as well.
Really, it's a matter of timelines.

If they had a real plan to start a self-supporting Mars colony (or at least self-supporting within a timeline when aid of some sort could be sent), I wouldn't see a big issue with that. Not much different from the early exploration/colonial days.

One that always comes to mind for me is cellular companies and billing errors. Strange how they can make the same error, every month, for possible a tens or hundreds of thousands, and the solution always seems to be just "oh sorry sir, we'll correct that on your next bill."

I had a co-worker who had a pretty tight budget, and remember that every single month he was on the phone correcting his cellular company's "mistakes." Of course, he was locked into a 3yr contract, so even after half a year or more mistakes he couldn't switch.

Meanwhile, the people that didn't watch their bills like a hawk get screwed, and the telco makes millions of illegitimate profit. Strange how those errors are 99.99% of the time in favour of the telco, and how they seem to always come back.

Who gets charged in court for that?

I'd imagine there were all sorts of stories about what one could do with a laptop when the were still fairly fresh and PC's were much more common.
I certainly remember people commenting about things like gaming on laptops, which initially was not very good/desirable but later picked up when the mobile graphics cards improved and TFT screens came out.

The GP is posting because trolls like yourself are saying it isn't done. Seems a fairly direct cause and effect to me.

But I would really like it if I could use documents from my PC on my tablet, especially spreadsheets, which are great for doing things such as
* Tracking client appointments, pay, travel, expenses, etc
* Keep a budget
* Tracking mileage on my vehicle (granted there are separate apps for this)
Thus far all the apps I've used for that tend to be fairly limited

I don't expect my tablet to be a PC. I wouldn't expect to play PC games on a tablet, and I probably wouldn't do a lot of coding unless the horsepower/storage scale up a lot more, but editing documents... yeah, I wouldn't mind that.

Nothing wrong with teaching programming with network libraries, and frankly for the dedicated hacker-types it's probably not something they couldn't have figured out on their own. Some of the things that get taught in chemistry could certainly go back (heck, some of the most fun experiments were things that went flash or boom), as could various things that get taught in shop.

Sounds like the issue was dealt with appropriately in the end, but it's really about teaching accountability and having appropriate responses when somebody crosses the line.

If revolution should happen, you cannot rely on the Army, the Navy, or the Air Force to remain intact as fighting units, to be used against the people of the United States.

You can't discount a large portion of them either. If played right, they could be used to suppress groups designated as terrorists or whatnot.

The Nazi's were made up of citizens too. It didn't stop them from doing horrific things to certain segments of German society (the Jewish were most visible, but atrocities were committed against many other groups).

Think of the increasing brutality from police in some places, or the attitudes of the TSA etc. A smart yet evil gov't will play elements against each other to accomplish their goals. It seems that right now, all they have to do is label somebody or group a terrorist and suddenly they're not people anymore...

Left 4 Dead 2 is still a favorite at many of the LAN events I attend.
If that one gets ported, it will probably do well for moving some users over to 'nix.

For my part, it'll be installed in the PXE-boot gaming platform that I've got at my place.

It seems partly due to humanity developing a fear of smart computers, or AI.

While no doubt some level of computer automation is needed, it would stand somewhat to reason that they might not have anything too advanced because fear of higher-computing technology (basically a worry that it would end up something like Cylons again).